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Monetising a Mobile Audience: What You Need to Know Today, So You Don't Lose Your Audience Tomorrow

by on 30th May 2017 in News

It's no secret that mobile is where the audience is. But what options are there to monetise that audience. Writing exclusively for ExchangeWire, André Baden-Semper, VP sales and marketing Europe, Purch provides the best practices to follow that will allow you to release the full potential of your mobile audience.

First and foremost, programmatic is where it’s at right now in the publishing world. Over the past 12 months there has been a significant increase in mobile programmatic spend and is predicted to take an enormous three-quarters of overall digital ad spend in 2017 in the UK, in 2016 equating to £2.67bn (USD$4.08bn). Why? The answer is simple – more people are spending longer on their mobiles, they search and buy products on their mobiles and their levels of engagement are high. Increasing numbers use mobile to shop for products with a staggering 76% of digital products and 46% of electronics now bought on mobile devices. Consequently, there is a great opportunity to drive high levels of performance via mobile advertising; and programmatic is a great option for efficiency and value.
To take full advantage of programmatic, it’s recommended that dedicated mobile programmatic marketplaces (PMPs) that target relevant first-party data segments are utilised – for example, smartphone intenders on a mobile PMP for a telecom client. We utilise bespoke mobile ad formats, which are available on a programmatic basis. Purch also have their own shopper apps and membership solutions enabling us to deliver cross-device/channel targeting. Making high-quality content and branded content available for bite-size mobile consumption with easily accessed, on-the-go, help-to-buy information is a must.
It’s also vital that advertisers ensure a high level of user experience, since you want existing and future customers to develop loyalty and return time and time again. If your ad formats are a nuisance, or provide a negative experience, that isn’t going to happen.
Improving yield & latency issues with header bidding
If you want to improve your yield (of course you do), header bidding – and, more specifically, server-to-server (S2S) integration – offers a very positive impact on yield and latency. Indeed, significant enough for Purch to go 100% server-to-server. As a publisher, we love the control we have over our ad inventory as a consequence. We’ve actually been using header bidding for three years now; and the evolution of this has been our move to S2S.
Quality is king
High on Purch's agenda this year is also to increase the amount of quality video content across our sites and on mobile. Maintaining control over the quality is key; and having our own technology has been important with our own video players in-article. This way we are able to offer native video advertising with high viewability for advertisers.
For ultimate success, you also need to fully understand users and their needs and the journey that they take from the research phase (e.g. reading reviews) right through to the shopping cart. This data is the fuel that drives ad decisioning and consumer engagement. We drive £1bn of sales per year across our sites from data. If you want to know when to serve users the most helpful advertising to assist with their buying decisions, then a publisher's first-party data is vital. We establish if users are high intenders to buy smartphones, for example, by their content interactions and if they have searched for the latest Samsung or iPhone. It’s important to use data in tandem with great content environments. Targeting a smartphone intender when they are reading smartphone content is much more powerful than a smartphone intender who happens to be reading a weather app (for instance).
Collaboration between advertising & editorial teams
Collaborating with editorial teams and advertising partners in order to develop your mobile experience is also as must. Content has to be fit for purpose. It has to be mobile-ready and provide helpful buying information. Brands and advertisers need to consider the mobile experience and use engaging, unintrusive, personalised advertising formats. Content is key. Always connect content to commerce. We make it easy for users to read ad content and push them down the quickest route to buy which, in many cases, is on their mobiles.
If there was one thing I would recommend to publishers in order to increase mobile ad budgets it would be content over cash. User experience is the most important thing; otherwise, they just won’t come back!
Looking to industry at large, it’s common to read that Facebook and Google are taking as much as 80% of digital ad spend, and even more when mobile is involved. Thus rises the question, what’s left for the UK publishers and how should we alter our strategies to thrive when working in an industry so dominated by this duopoly? The answer again is that content is king. As much as possible, it’s vital to supply all the information users need once they hit sites and make their buying decision – in our case as a technology-focused publisher, whether this is for a new laptop, DSL camera, or business printer. There needs to be the right combination of high-quality content, shopping tools, and additional services to make buying easy. Focusing on what users need and staying in touch with buyer habits and trends is essential. For Purch’s web properties, such as Tom’s Guide, advertisers appreciate that we are offering a unique environment where buying signals are at a peak and we provide the opportunity to address users at optimum moments using data. This is something that larger platforms such as Facebook and Google can’t offer.
Publishers taking control of their tech
Across the industry we’re starting to see the rise of publishers bringing technology in-house, such as Time Inc’s acquisition of Adelphic. For publishers to succeed, it’s important for us to have our own technology in order to maintain control, acquire a deeper understanding of our inventory and, thus, derive the best value from it.
It was predicted that £600m was lost to non-viewable ads last year. so all publishers should also be doing their best to improve this for advertisers. Making highly viewable placements should be a priority and removing placements that are not useful or viewable should also be happening. Purch’s video formats are in-article and above the fold, for example, and viewability is much improved as a result, as the video player moves up the page with the user.
The industry talks about fraud in terms of its dollar impact on advertisers and brands, but publishers also suffer. By stealing a publisher’s digital identity and using the value of the brand associated with it, fraudsters not only take money that might otherwise belong to the publishers, they also manipulate the associated site and audience data. In order to combat this fraud, it’s vital to work with partners and, if you can, have a compliance team always working on it.
Server-to-server is key for future digital advertising success
Looking to the future, S2S is key. Better, more engaging formats that are more suited to users will be the standard. Bespoke formats that can be built for certain specific audiences will reign supreme and more personalisation will be available for advertisers to achieve their goals and for publishers to take control of their technical solutions; for example, data, DMP technologies, programmatic technologies, provide a sound foundation upon which to do this.
In 2017, we expect to see a rise in three key trends: firstly, the increase of mobile content for videos across all sites and wrapped into performance marketing strategies. Secondly, the increasing monetisation of the mobile web with more bespoke, mobile-targeted PMPs and programmatic guaranteed deals including native and video – driving first-party data PMPs. And, finally, the provision of more bespoke personalised mobile ad formats for advertisers to showcase their produces and give immersive entertaining experiences programmatically.
For best practice in the mobile area, these are the areas that the industry at large should focus on, with a keen eye on what the end user is enjoying.